Does anyone use an electric butter churn? I'm considering getting one because of the quantity of cream I have. Looking for recommendations if anyone has some experience with one. The least expensive one I have found is from Glengarry and costs $190 plus shipping:

We make butter from 'home-skimmed' raw milk/cream. And the milk content (which seems inevitable, as DW prefers completely skimmed milk) does seem to slow the buttering coming. Temp is the other big factor, often we take our straight out of the fridge and it'll take a full 10 min. but if it's warmer the time certainly is pared back (20'C is the target). We use the kitchen whizz on the lowest speed, works ok, but personally would rather have a 'real' (hand operated) churn if I had the opportunity. Tried washing it in the whizz as well but figured I was wasting my time (as it seemed to continually smash more fat out), so I wash the butter by hand now.Cheers,

I got one of these http://www.rubbermaid.com/Category/Pages/ProductDetail.aspx?spaceId=Kitchen%28RubbermaidSpaces%29&CatName=Beverage&SubcatId=BeverageStorage&Prod_ID=RP091197 at the thrift store the other day while I was looking for possible cheese molds. I used it to make butter last night. I used cultured cream at cool room temp and I had butter in about a minute and a half. I then turned the top to strain and carefully poured out about 90% of the buttermilk with no loss of butter. After that I chilled it in a pot of snow, which I am abundantly supplied with at the moment, for a half hour and then washed it by hand in the same pitcher. Yielded a nice 1.5 lbs of cultured butter from 3.5 pints of cream. Probably about 10 minutes of actual working time including washing the dishes.

A caveat: about 4 strokes after it turned to butter it sucked the pad off of the rod, but that could be fixed by drilling a small hole through both and using a little stainless steel screw or pin to hold them together, but still be removable for cleaning. Or you could use the loss to tell you when it was butter. Otherwise, a very nice little churn.

Yeah - I wish I knew what causes that. I have to culture mine or I run out of patience before it churns. I've found that if I pasteurize my cream at 145 F for 30 minutes, cool to 60 F, add Meso II culture and sit at 60 F for about 30 hours I get a firm curd and a pleasant sourness to the cream. When churned, it makes excellent tasting butter - no sourness, nice buttery flavor. In my hand-crank churn, this takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. I'll be happy to pass along this chore to the electric churn.

Twice a week we take a gallon of fresh milk from the morning milking and add the cream from about 3 gallons of milk from the previous day and then add half a cup of buttermilk. We let it set overnight by the woodstove and churn the next day. Sometimes it churns in minutes; other times it takes an hour. Very frustrating. I really don't know what is causing it. Some Oldtimers say add ice to it when it does that and others say add warm water. Tried both. Hard to tell if it helped.

I think that winter cream is just tough to get to turn to butter because the cows aren't getting fresh food anymore. Once the grass starts growing, the problem goes away, so there must be something in the fresh, green grass that isn't present in dried hay.

I'm not getting enough cream right now to bother skimming it for buttermaking. I'll wait for the spring flush.

Farmer, you could make excess in summer and freeze for winter, if you had a large enough freezer?

When I used to work in Siberia in 91-93 after the breakup of USSR, the Russians had a hard time getting goods, so when they could, they bought lots. I remember a Russian friend in winter having 20 blocks of butter frozen on his balcony as his supplies (along with extra tires for car etc etc).

Anyone just making a small amount for using fresh, I just use a 2 litre coke bottle to shake it up. I also use raw cream, just scooped off the top after it has sat for a day in fridge, then leave the cream out on the bench for a few hours to sour a bit and come to room temp and then shake shake shake. Only takes about 5 minutes. Then I cut the bottle and it comes out in one bit. Put into iced water and wash it and vo lah, yummy fresh butter to eat. Neighbours love it.